


those strangely dressed

by scionblad



Series: those strangely dressed [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Historical, Canonical Character Death, Culture Shock, Developing Relationship, Enemies to Friends, Ensemble Cast, Implied Relationships, M/M, Male Friendship, Period-Typical Homophobia, Unresolved Tension, Xenophobia, ensemble meaning royal sibs and retainers, ryouma/kagerou is so minor they appear together only once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 02:13:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7599418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scionblad/pseuds/scionblad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Swept between the centuries-old art of kabuki and the changing world of postwar Japan, two actors meet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	those strangely dressed

**Author's Note:**

> Leon/Takumi, the Shōwa Nostalgia remix. liek dis if u agree
> 
> JP canon names because I’m Pretentious™

When he was seventeen, his brother inherited their deceased father's name, and he got his brother's. They folded their legs and touched foreheads to the floor, and from the bottom of his diaphragm he recited his new identity.

Such was the family tradition. He carried it without complaint, as was expected of him, but in the manor that was formerly his childhood home, his father's second wife gently rested her hands on his shoulder and brought tea, called him Takumi. They saved that name for the small circles he trusted. He owned that name truly, at least. There were no duties attached to it, no family or stage obligations to be had with it. It simply was.

Ryouma and his new name were busy for much of that month, arranging the funeral, in his wake the trails of white flowers and incense. Takumi would wake to a house shaking with footsteps, but no voices. He ignored them and practiced the plays Sumeragi taught him, and then the plays Sumeragi's brother taught him. His feet slid automatically on the tatami mats. He kept the door closed and after several hours he sat in his own room with tea and an empty heart, thinking about his brother and his father swinging the great lion wigs in great circles. That was a long time ago.

 

 

Snow covered the courtyard. Mikoto sat quietly, hands folded neatly in her lap, as Takumi spoke the lines from all the plays he had learned. He adjusted the sleeves of his haori to imitate the gestures of a fine lady, and she laughed. It was too cold to smell but he knew her clothes would be perfumed with jasmine and green tea.

She passed away only a year later. He shut himself back in his room to slide his feet across tatami.

 

 

"I'm told your brother is going on the television," says Oboro as she deftly undoes his obi. The weight falls away and he is glad for it.

“He was always one for that, I suppose,” says Takumi, shrugging the rest of the elaborate kimono off.

“I'd rather have real people sitting in a theatre watching me," she says. "It makes it that much more special.”

Takumi leans towards the mirror and begins to wipe the white off his face.

 

 

He doesn’t live with his brother anymore. Better not to stay in that big house with his brother and all the heaviness of history. From his new apartment he could walk to the theatre instead of having to be driven by his brother’s driver, an imposing man with a scar twisting his eye. It doesn’t prevent his sisters from visiting him from time to time—Sakura plays _shamisen_ and plays while he dances out stories of samurai and ghosts in the tiny space, tables and cushions pushed to the walls.

“You’re too skilled to practice this much,” she says when her fingers finish plucking the last notes.

 _Our brother doesn’t practice at all_ , he hears. He sits down with a huff. “I don’t care.”

Her fingers brush over the strings of the _shamisen_ lightly. Takumi pulls the table back out and pours tea in two cups. “How is Orochi?” he asks, sliding a cup towards her.

“Good,” says Sakura, after a heartbeat’s pause full of drink. “She asks after you often.”

It isn’t an unexpected answer. Orochi looked after both him and Sakura as they grew up, and was close to their father’s second wife. Takumi only recalls vague memories of his birth mother, but she passed away giving birth to Sakura when he was only three years old. More prevalent are hazy scenes of Orochi laughing, the smell of smoke in the air, dolls lined up in a row. He leans his elbow on the table.

“I’m doing fine by myself,” he says, looking out the window.

“I know,” Sakura says.

Her thumb runs across the rim of the cup, _shamisen_ set off to the side. He watches the sun spread burnt orange across the sky. The lights in the city are beginning to flicker on.

“Oboro told me yesterday Ryouma was going to appear on the television,” he says.

There’s a little catch in the air around them, and he pulls his gaze away from the window to look at her. She composes herself and drinks her tea, one hand straight across the bottom of the cup. How proper, he thinks.

“Yes, he is,” she says finally. “There is a play going to be broadcast on the television, and he will be in it.”

His tea suddenly feels unwelcome in his mouth. He swallows hastily and ends up coughing. Sakura reaches over and slaps his shoulder blade as the last of the coughs force themselves out of his throat.

It’s good for him, he supposes. He is well known, considered fairly handsome, and it will likely be a successful venture. Ryouma was always special like that. People fall over themselves reaching their hands out to him as he glides effortlessly across the stage and through life. Takumi sits in his own boat, sails drooping, moving only by the effort of his own sweat and blood. Ryouma and his pretty lights and the exciting buzz of the television are a prick in the distance.

“I’m fine,” he says.

 

 

Takumi doesn’t own a television; the radio is enough for him to sit with sake and listen as daylight fades. He turns it off when he hears his brother’s voice crackle over the airways.

The trees are beginning to bloom. Maybe he should call Oboro and Hinata to view the cherry blossoms with him. Oboro works sometimes at a tailor’s store when she isn’t helping him dress or when she isn’t helping remake costumes at the theatre, and Hinata lives somewhere nearby. He can’t remember where since normally it is Hinata who calls on Takumi rather than the other way around, but he’s sure he can find his friend in a ramen stall somewhere.

He’s dressed to go search for Hinata when he opens the door to find someone standing there. A man draws a scarf above his mouth, and bows.

“Your brother has sent me to request that you appear to a family dinner on the next Sunday,” he says evenly.

He blinks. “Saizou,” he says, almost belatedly.

He bows again, and leaves. After several slow moments, Takumi steps out of his rooms and closes the door behind him. His brother could stand to be less like some king, sending people left and right to do things for him. Like anyone in the city had money to do that anymore. Saizou has been with their family since before the war, so he supposes it’s some form of loyalty more than anything else. Ryouma’s too important, is all it is.

 

 

There are leather shoes scattered around the floor when he arrives at his brother’s manor, like black cicadas stationary on the floor.

Foreigners, he deduces. Few people wear Western clothes in their household.

The whole purpose of this is clear now. Smoke will curl from pipes, sake will be drunk, and his brother and whichever foreigner he has decided to entertain tonight with the antiques of their forefathers will make idle talk about the changing times and bridging cultures. Takumi thinks he’s better off drinking with Hinata and sliding pieces of yakitori off a skewer, or bringing a bottle to Oboro’s shop and watching her embroider costumes for plays in months to come.

Ryouma addresses him by his stage name when he enters. Takumi folds his hands and bows.

“It is an honor to meet you,” he says, and sits down.

Three foreigners sit across from him. The oldest introduces himself as Marx, his speech heavily accented. He carries himself like Ryouma. The youngest, Elise, can’t sit still and wiggles in the corner of Takumi’s vision, fidgeting with her blond hair and the sleeves of her dress.

The last one looks closest to his age, though with foreigners Takumi can never truly tell. Marx speaks his name, but Takumi misses it in the fold of the foreigner’s hands. The way he reaches for his sake cup is calculated, the steady gaze of his strangely colored eyes measured, his hair and clothes neatly arranged. Perhaps his clothes glitter in stage lights and weigh like sandbags. Perhaps his skin washes away like grease paint.

He puts a piece of steamed fish in his mouth and watches his brother patiently listening to the foreigners’ awkward syllables. The simplicity of his single-room apartment beckons at the back of his mind. Here he feels naked without the wig pressing down on his head and the carefully drawn eyebrows in black line.

“Shinnosuke-san,” says the oldest foreigner. “I am told that you are, like your brother, also a kabuki actor. Have you performed together ever?”

Takumi is still performing.

“On occasion,” replies Takumi. “I normally play different roles than he does.”

“Is it true that men play women’s roles?” Elise jumbles in broken Japanese.

“It is true; men play women,” he says slowly. “It is difficult, but it is an important part of the art.”

Marx nods. “Our family has several actors as well, but kabuki is so different from American cinema,” he muses.

“I would be delighted to see a play or two,” says the last foreigner in perfect Japanese. “As an actor myself, it would be fascinating to compare the two traditions.”

“Certainly,” Ryouma says. “We would be honored to have you, Leon. Kabuki is a national pride.”

As expected. Takumi pours more sake, delicately holding the shallow cup between his thumb and middle finger.

 

 

Orochi persuades Takumi to stay the night in the house, and he obliges out of some unnecessary loyalty he has always felt compelled to follow. He regrets this somewhat when Hinoka visits him as he is reading. She brings him hot water, which he supposes is better than nothing.

“You shouldn’t stay up so late,” she chides. “It’s not good for you.”

Takumi turns another page in his book and gives a noncommittal grunt. He’s never slept well either way. Hinoka raises her cup to her lips.

The room is the one he grew up in. It faces the courtyard, and as a child Takumi liked to dangle his feet above the snow in winter and tickle his toes with flower petals in summer, and then Orochi or Mikoto or Hinoka would scold him for getting the floor dirty. It didn’t matter. He likes being able to feel close to the open air. The door now is half open, even though the spring night is still not warm. The chill of the wind is comforting.

“What did you think of the Americans?” Hinoka tries again. Takumi sighs and puts his book down.

“What do you want me to say? That they’re charming and wonderful and kind?”

The expression on her face changes, her mouth seeming to struggle between speech and silence. “You don’t need to love them, but it wouldn’t hurt to look less like you were tied there and made to eat nattō for the rest of your life.”

He leans his head back on the wall. “It doesn’t matter what they think of me.”

“Ryouma tells me that Leon appears to have much in common with you.”

He should have seen that card coming, but a soft patter of disbelief lands on his breath all the same. “I don’t want anything to do with them.”

“At least invite him to a play.”

“Ryouma’s already done that.” His brother poking his nose in every conversation Takumi has is starting to get annoying. “I’m going to bed.”

Hinoka runs her left thumb over the joints of her right hand, savoring the natural wrinkles with an odd weight.

“Good night,” she says after a heartbeat. Her footsteps fade unhurriedly, and he turns off the light and watches the stars shiver through the sliver of his doorway.

 

 

He previously wrote his name with the word for “moon” instead of the word for “new.” The new name suits his brother more than it does him.

The names were passed a month after his father’s passing. He said nothing on the journey home, but Mikoto made him tea over rice and miso soup. Her hair flowed loose and long over her shoulder. She somehow knew exceptionally well when Takumi needed words and when he did not. At that time there were already enough in his head, turning his new name over and over, rolling it around on his tongue until it felt maneuverable.

They are just things to paint on and off, the family name slipping off as easily as a five-crest haori. Takumi wipes his face clean of white and red and sweat and sighs heavily. His lips are dry, and the thought of tea over rice makes his stomach rumble.

“Hey!” Hinata flings aside the curtain with a force of three hurricanes. “Izakaya! You! Me!”

Takumi groans and falls backwards. “I’m too tired.”

“You say that every single time but we still go anyway!” Hinata grabs Takumi’s forearm and _pulls_.

“ _Ow!_ ”

“Hinata, leave him alone!” Oboro, his savior, scolds him, arms spilling out with elaborate costumes. “You’re _hurting_ him.”

Hinata makes a face at her. “You’re just jealous that you have to stay here longer to re-organize all the costumes.”

Oboro looks like she might throw something but instead huffs away with trails of heavy fabric. Hinata giggles.

“She makes such a funny face when she gets mad,” he says, plopping down next to Takumi. “She looks as scary as the ghosts in the plays.”

“Yeah, she’ll die and then come back to haunt your house and shave off your hideous hair,” says Takumi. He rearranges his limbs so his head is pillowed on his arms. Hinata laughs his normal deep, guffawing laugh.

“Is there anything you want to eat today?” Hinata leans back on the palms of his hands and flops his head back so he is looking at the ceiling. “I want something fried. Takoyaki?”

Takumi hums and yawns. “Tea on rice.”

“Tea on rice?”

“What?”

Hinata whines a little bit. “That’s so… _simple_.”

Takumi watches the spokes of the ceiling fan rotate languidly round and round. “Takoyaki is simple.”

“No, it’s not.”

“It kind of is.”

They go back and forth until they decide cold udon noodles would be fine since today seems oddly warm. The sky is fading from red to a dark blue when they step out from the back entrance, Hinata chattering almost-taunting good byes to an almost-snarling Oboro. Takumi hides a small smile behind his sleeve. They never change, truly.

“Shinnosuke-san.”

Takumi turns, attempts to hide how his throat jumps like his voice will waver. “Hello,” he says unsteadily. Ryouma has kept his promises, it seems. A drooping sensation reminiscent of being tied up and made to eat nattō for the rest of his life settles in his stomach.

Leon bows his head. “I wanted to compliment you on your performance. You were quite a sight.”

It sounds like a mockery. Takumi slides the edge of his sleeve roughly under his thumb and forefinger and squints slightly in the dim light. “Thank you,” he says carefully. “I hope the experience was enjoyable.”        

He can almost hear Hinata blinking rapidly behind him, struggling to make sense of the whole situation.

“I cannot say it was without its memorable points,” responds Leon, reaching inside his jacket pocket for a cigarette case. “Though speaking truthfully, I must say it felt antiquated, carrying all that lies within old Japan with it.”

“I am sorry kabuki cannot deliver you a nice new modern experience seen in America,” Takumi says tersely. “But to change such a nature would be to change the entire art.”

Leon flicks his lighter sharply. The aristocratic lines of his face are thrown into steep relief by the flame. “If that is how you feel, then I won’t concern myself with someone who takes a childishly defensive stance that he cannot listen to the honest opinions of one with fresh eyes.”

“And I won’t concern myself with someone who fails to understand kabuki as it is and as it must be understood,” retorts Takumi.

The smoke from Leon’s cigarette swirls around his face, warm yellow from the lantern lights, snaking towards the sky. His exhale sounds like a gust from a typhoon.

“Let’s go,” Hinata says quietly, gently tugging the fabric of Takumi’s sleeve.

They leave, Leon’s silhouette drifting away in its cloud of smoke. He coughs it out of his lungs when he gets home.

 

 

The plays at the theatre rotate monthly. If the evening set is an act from _Yoshinogawa_ , an act from _Rakuda_ , and an act from _Genroku Hanami Odori_ , then they will repeat that evening set for twenty-five days with the exact same actors. The next month, they change the matinee and the evening sets and perform the new sets for twenty-five days. Such is the tradition of the theatre.

Takumi feels certain that he will not see Leon again. What could he want in seeing the same faces, the same costumes, the same sets, repeated over and over for twenty-five days? He stares too long at the assembled set of his makeup tools, and blinks to the ghostly afterimages burned onto his eyes.

It shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. He won’t have anything to do with that.

 

 

On Sunday Sakura asks him to come to the manor, so he goes.

“I’m so glad you came!” she says as he slips his sandals off.

“It’s not like it’s out of my way or anything,” he mumbles. There are too many shoes at the doorway. He loves Sakura too much for this sinking feeling in his stomach.

She smiles timidly at him. “I’m still glad,” she says.

Everyone seems to be in the long hall used for dining. He sits between Hinoka and Sakura and tries to ignore the pale heads of the Americans sitting across from him.

“Sakura-chan, I can’t believe you don’t celebrate your birthday!” Elise pouts a little bit from where she sits.

“We do celebrate birthdays,” says Sakura. “Every New Year’s we gather and give thanks that everyone has turned one year older.”

“A strange custom,” muses Elise’s older sister. She passes her hand delicately in front of her chin, wrist glistening with jewelry. “Though, in a way, there may be some sense to it.”

Takumi presses cut after cut of sashimi into his mouth, and says nothing.

 

 

There’s already a book on the low table of his room, but it’s not a book that he recognizes. _A History of Kabuki_ , it says.

He opens it, tentatively, and finds it falls open easily to a page with one corner folded down. The passage speaks of an English writer, Shakespeare—Takumi forms his mouth around the syllables, trying to imagine what it would sound like in properly spoken English—whose plays were re-imagined for kabuki. _Sakura-doki Zenino Yononaka_ , it says, was a staging of his play _The Merchant of Venice_ , performed in 1885. He sifts through his mental archives. He doesn’t know of such a play.

The door slides open, and Takumi jumps.

“Ah. Shinnosuke-san,” Leon says. The slight exhale of disappoint does not escape Takumi’s ears.

“Leon,” Takumi acknowledges curtly.

“I’m afraid that’s my book,” says Leon. “I was looking for it.”

Takumi flips the book closed. “I was just done reading it.”

“Well,” says Leon. “I’d like to have it back.”

It’s only after he leaves that Takumi realizes he’s forgotten to wonder what Leon was doing in his room.

 

 

He forgets to wonder about a lot of things with Leon. When it occurs to him, it is long after he’s mulled over the composed mask of a face, slender hands clasped behind, pale gold hair catching the light.

Leon is right. Kabuki is old. It’s Edo Japan alive again, a woodblock print come to life. It’s samurai and ghosts and princesses and courtesans, ornaments dangling from smooth black hair, thieves and lovers’ suicides and revenge. All he’s known. He thinks about the television again, about Ryouma’s face on pinpricks of light—did Marx say Leon was an actor in cinema?

He pours himself more tea and looks out the window again, the stars shifting in the dark sky. Leon’s face arranged in pinpricks of light, like stars.

Not strong enough. He finishes the tea and moves on to sake.

The next Sunday he goes to the cinema and watches a movie. There is no difference, he thinks, sitting there in the darkness, hands tucked inside his sleeves. Death, love, honor, hope—maybe Leon does not eat fish cut fresh or wear kimono tied with obi, but surely the Americans know death and love and honor and hope.

The camera jumps close to the actress’s face. Too close. He wants to see the whole thing, how the samurai’s wife is standing in relation to the woodcutter, how the priest looks upon the scene, how the trees frame their figures in a tableau of mystery. This close, Takumi feels he should paint his face and hide his mouth behind his sleeve.

He imagines Leon’s face framed that close, filling the screen, luminescent. Leon’s silhouette in shadow and gray and light.

In the evening he goes cherry blossom viewing. Oboro buys a bottle of sake, Hinata brings rice balls from the store nearby, and Takumi packs fried tofu fritters that Sakura made. The three of them sit a small distance away from the rest of the family. He watches Ryouma’s seven-year-old son chase Asama’s daughter between the trees, shrieking with delight. Saizou’s son chews on mochi with tiny teeth.

Oboro seems content to arrange fallen flower petals in patterns across her lap. From his position lying on the grass, Hinata conspicuously attempts to blow them off onto the ground. She hits the top of his head lightly. “Stop that. How old are you, anyway?”

He giggles. Takumi leans back against the bark of the tree and drinks from his cup. Orochi has hung paper lanterns on the trees surrounding their party, and the flowers light up reddish pink in the evening sky.

“The season of cherry blossoms,” he says to no one in particular. “A world where all that matters is money.”

“What are you talking about?” says Hinata.

“It’s the name of a play,” says Takumi. The pink petals float gently onto the ground.

“I don’t know it,” says Oboro.

“It was based on a play from England.”

Neither of them seems to know what to say to that.

 

 

He finds a bracelet on the hallway outside his brother’s room.

The pearls catch the light of his apartment lamp as he turns it over and over in his fingers. It’s nothing that Hinoka would own, he thinks. She doesn’t like elaborate things like this. Neither does Sakura. Neither does Ryouma’s wife Kagerou.

He runs a thumb over the beads. Unbidden, Leon’s pale hair and hands shift across his memory.

Takumi puts the bracelet in a drawer and closes his eyes.

 

 

“Why have you called me here?” Leon says.

Takumi studies him. He looks somewhat uncomfortable in the apartment, being forced to fold his legs and sit on the floor like a Japanese person. His eyes don’t appear hostile; rather, the light in them shifts between colors disconcertingly.

“I felt you could help me,” says Takumi.

He takes the bracelet out of the drawer. The pearls clack against each other, chattering gently in his fingers.

A strange shadow passes over Leon’s face. The ceiling fan above them spins lazily.

With faintly trembling hands Leon takes the bracelet into his hands slowly, running a thumb over the beads, just as Takumi had done nights before. He says nothing for a long time, eyes flicking from pearl to pearl. Takumi waits.

“Where did you get this?” Leon asks finally.

“I found it outside my brother’s room,” Takumi replies.

Leon’s grip slips almost imperceptibly. “I see,” he says quietly.

He handles the bracelet like it carries the universe inside it, holding it in his palm, brushing fingertips against the gold clasp.

“Have you mentioned this to anyone else?” he asks.

“No,” says Takumi. “No one else is dishonest enough.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re smart enough to keep quiet when it matters,” says Takumi, shuffling across the room to where the kettle sits above the small charcoal pit.

Leon turns the pearls over and over, silent.

 

 

“How long do you think it’s been happening?” Takumi asks distractedly.

Leon brings a cigarette to his mouth and inhales deeply before answering. “Perhaps almost a month, now,” he says tiredly.

He doesn’t seem to like talking about it. While Takumi’s mind morbidly sifts and picks through possibilities, painting scenes of phantoms meeting under moonlight, Leon is content to submerge himself in his smoke cloud, unmoving. Takumi pours more sake in both of his and Leon’s cups.

“That time… the book,” Takumi says. “Why were you reading it?”

“What book?”

“ _History of Kabuki_.”

“Ah.” Leon stares at the clear liquid in his cup for a moment, arranging his thoughts in the sake before answering. “I was… intrigued by your words, I suppose. I wondered what perspectives I could gain from understanding kabuki as it is meant to be understood, like you said.”

They drink.

“There does not seem to be a vast expanse of difference though,” says Leon. “There are things that are as easily understood in the West.”

Takumi watches the smoke float lazily from the blackened end of Leon’s cigarette. “Death, love, hope,” he says.

“The very fact that the language and content of Shakespeare has been preserved for the near three hundred years speaks to the universality of its stories,” says Leon, tracing the rim of the cup with his finger. “There is intrigue, family honor, propriety, but also, like you said, death, love, and hope. They even forbade women from acting at that time as well, and men played women’s roles.”

“ _Onnagata_ ,” says Takumi.

“I could assume ignorantly the _onnagata_ could easily be replaced with female actors in female roles, but kabuki seems less about representing reality than it is about concerning itself with presentation.”

“No,” Takumi says. “The _onnagata_ is… an idea of a woman, I think. It’s less the woman and more the character, like the courtesan or the princess or the samurai’s wife. They tried to add women back into the theatre but it’s… the techniques are just so complicated that it’s better for men to do it. Although,” he adds, “I remember those who did _onnagata_ several hundred years ago maintained the dress and social status of a woman.”

Leon rests his jaw against his free hand. “So if they acted like women, did they take lovers like women?”

Takumi shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Were they ever known to take wives?”

“I don’t remember.”

“A shame. The societal implications of such behaviors would be a fascinating topic of study.” Leon takes another drag of his cigarette and taps the falling ash onto his table. “You should really get an ashtray.”

 

 

Perhaps bound by the companionship of two people keeping a secret, Takumi sees Leon more often. Sometimes they go to an _izakaya_ and Leon orders miso soup. Takumi laughs, and Leon asks why, and Takumi says it is his favorite soup. (He can almost hear Hinoka’s “I was right, after all,” but doesn’t tell her. She nags far too much.)

Sometimes they go to the home Leon is staying at, and Leon teaches Takumi chess. Sometimes they go to Takumi’s apartment, and Takumi teaches Leon shōgi. Leon struggles some to remember the kanji written on the pieces, but infuriatingly, he picks up quickly. It is a more rewarding venture than playing shōgi with Hinata, who sometimes moves pieces without rhyme or reason, or Hinoka, who sulks for days on end after she loses spectacularly. Leon isn’t without his sulking, but he is always eager for rematches, chances to try new strategy.

Sometimes they sit in Takumi’s apartment, windows thrown wide open, and smoke drifting from Leon’s pipe while Takumi watches the wisps curl erratically above them. He is trying to read a book on philosophy again, but Leon’s smoke rings keep distracting him. In public Leon slicks his hair back to keep the appearances of a young man, but here, after they have spent half an hour at the public bath and his golden hair flops across his forehead, he looks vulnerable. Younger than he normally looks. The indigo-colored yukata he has borrowed from Takumi suits him in an odd way. Through his eyelashes he can see the sharp lines of Leon’s cheekbones, the diagonal tendon of his neck, the beginning of the collarbone.

They discovered days before that they were both interested in philosophy from both of their respective cultures. Takumi reads from the philosophy books he owns and Leon does his best to translate the complicated English texts he brought and they debate and leave half-eaten containers of yakisoba on the table. Takumi looks out the window. The lights are beginning to flicker on in the city.

 

 

Leon is standing behind him in line. He’s standing too close.

“Hello,” Takumi says to him. Leon smiles and runs a hand through his hair. The line moves and Takumi walks a bit to fill the empty space in front of him. Leon is still standing too close.

“Are you getting the curry bread?” Takumi asks him, but the words are never spoken; rather they float like thoughts made half-manifest. Leon laughs and says something, but Takumi can’t hear. The people around them are too loud. His laugh looks pretty, though. Takumi feels like he’s walking on air, his chest buoyant and content.

There isn’t curry bread; instead it’s oden, but it’s not winter and they aren’t sitting at the stall either. Takumi picks and chooses what he likes and puts it into his bowl, and Leon is there. _Leon is there_ , he thinks almost desperately, and gets more food. He looks up suddenly, dizzily, and Leon is standing, laughs again. His hair is very fine, Takumi notices. It falls on his face in a slightly disorderly but elegant fashion, brushing against his cheekbones.

The street stops. It’s a Japanese grave. The flowers have wilted, and Takumi puts his bowl there, now filled with fallen _sakura_ petals. A hand shoots up from the bowl. He screams. The hand is almost white, and the rest of the arm comes out, followed by the shoulders, head, ribs, hips. It’s Leon, but his face keeps shifting, eyes going from purple to green to brown.

Takumi tries to yell and run away, but his legs melt like lead, his knees stuck together—he’s in costume, he’s the courtesan Otomi, but he’s cut up all over, bleeding— _that’s not right_ , he wants to scream. _Yosaburō is the one who gets cut up._

He can’t stand up. His body feels like it’s fighting through invisible syrup. Someone stands over him. It’s Ryouma, holding a sword. Next to him, a woman hides a smile between delicate pearled fingers. Behind him, a man with golden hair walks away to the beat of drums. He stops, and starts to turn—

Takumi opens his eyes and inhales.

It’s still dark outside. He sits up and rubs his eyes with his knuckles.

When he was very young, he would go to Mikoto after the dreams and she would rub circles onto his back while he cried. Now he just tries to ignore the squeezing feeling in his chest. The images are already beginning to bleed out of his memory.

He stands up and wipes his face with a wet towel. Today he must go to his nephew’s lesson. Shinonome and Ryouma will begin performing _Renjishi_ in the upcoming month. He does not have performances today.

Takumi watches his rice cook slowly in the cooker as the sun rises. The fish sizzles and turns hot, and the miso soup bubbles in the pot.

Miso. He thinks of Leon, eyebrows furrowed, the corners of his small mouth turned down while Takumi laughs.

Something in his chest stirs, reminded of the dream. Takumi struggles, but he can’t remember.

 

 

“I’m worried about him,” Ryouma confesses as they watch Shinonome stomp and spin and trot about to the tune of the _shamisen_. “He’s so young and impressionable. _Renjishi_ could tire him out.”

“I think he’s fine,” says Takumi. “He has so much energy.”

Shinonome jerks into a pose, bouncing slightly, before he turns his chin to make a wide-eyed expression at Ryouma and Takumi. After a second, he breaks into a grin. Takumi waves at him with a smile of his own.

“He’s fine,” he repeats, as Shinonome breaks out of his wide-legged stance to hop up and down. “He’s talented for his age.”

Ryouma laughs shortly. “You’re right. He’s been practicing _Renjishi_ since he was two.”

At that age, Shinonome, with the encouragement and help of Orochi, had wrapped a towel around his head and walked around swinging the towel around erratically until he cried that his neck hurt. Kagerou had scolded him for knocking objects around the house over, and then told him not to swing with his neck, but his whole body. Takumi thinks it funny for someone so contained to be kind and playful like that. Perhaps that was why she had married Ryouma.

Ryouma steps forward to tap at Shinonome’s limbs with his fan. “Your feet should point a bit like this, here.” He demonstrates. “Try it.”

He’s patient when Shinonome struggles with a move or a pose, like their father was with their lessons growing up. Takumi rests his hands on his lap.

Kagerou doesn’t deserve this. No one does. Shinonome’s eyes still grow round and wide like plates when Orochi tells him ghost stories, or when Takumi strikes an arrow to the center. He will grow up with the stories of samurai and thieves and geisha struck into his heart until he can recite them in his sleep. He will grow up knowing love and family and duty, and Orochi and Kagerou and Saizou will make sure of it, even if Ryouma doesn’t.

Takumi strokes the inside of his thumb. He hasn’t drawn a bow in a long time. Not since he left his teenage years.

 

 

“You did archery?” Leon, halfway to drinking a cup of tea, puts the cup down.

“Why are you so surprised by that?”

“Archery seems such… if you’ll forgive my phrasing, a martial practice for the cowardly sort. You’re more confrontational in your aggression.” Leon pauses. “Though I suppose it makes sense. When you approach the shōgi or the chess game, you have the capacity to be calculated.”

“I appreciate your compliment,” says Takumi dryly as he leans back against the wall.

“You’re welcome.” Leon raises his cup almost mockingly, and drinks.

Takumi runs a finger over his right thumb again. He misses the meditation of letting a steady heart guide his arrow to the target. “Why did you choose to be an actor?” he asks.

Leon fiddles with his pipe, a thin Japanese one made of a polished reddish wood. “Something of a family affair, I suppose,” he says quietly.

His voice sounds far away. Takumi wants to run after it until he can see what Leon sees.

“You could say the same for me,” says Takumi, trying not to betray his desire to pry further.

Leon makes a noncommittal noise.

“I didn’t want to be a kabuki actor,” Takumi confesses. “But my mother encouraged me because she felt I could…achieve great heights with it, or something like that.”

“Do you like it?” Leon asks suddenly.

Takumi studies his fingernails, neatly cut. “It’s—” he begins, and stops. It wouldn’t actually have mattered either way, probably, since Ryouma could inherit all the traditions. But when he copied his father’s dancing, Mikoto just looked so happy. The cherry blossoms fell, the summer lanterns were lit, the leaves turned brilliant fire, the snow gently covered the land, and everything was good. He kept going. He keeps going.

“I can’t say that’s important at this point,” he says finally. “You just accept that it’s a part of yourself and don’t question it.”

It is an inglorious sort of thing, if thought about too closely. The heavy costumes constrict one’s breathing, the wigs grip the head uncomfortably, and the white paint may just melt off his face if he stands under the stage lights too long. He doesn’t expect Leon to know these sensations. But he thinks the soaring lightness when the audience shouts his name as he parades down the flower walkway, the roar of applause at the climax of an act, his own body giving way to the character’s thoughts and words, he wonders if such a thing happens in American cinema, or in the plays of Shakespeare that Leon speaks so highly of.

“I suppose so,” says Leon.

His lips close around the metal end of the pipe, pressed firm for a second, until he draws the pipe away to exhale.

“I’m hungry,” he says through a breath heavy with smoke. “Shall we get something to eat?”

 

 

The next day Takumi is performing, and will do so the rest of the week. For the matinee they are performing three acts of _Kirare Yosa_. He dusts white on his face and neck and hands and greets all his _senpai_ and fits a wig on his head.

He feels most in control on that stage, yet he only returns to his conscious thinking mind when he’s stepped off, the applause ringing in his ears. A strange phenomenon, but the familiar leftover rush he feels sitting in his dressing room is comforting.

Oboro unties his obi and takes his costume. He puts his arms through the sleeves of his kimono, but doesn’t tie it. It’s too hot.

“You’ll get your clothes dirty if you don’t wipe your makeup off,” she scolds him. He makes a face at her.

“No I won’t.”

She rolls her eyes, probably saving an “I told you so” for later, and leaves. He leans back on his palms, inhaling slowly and exhaling slower, calming his racing heart. The muscles in his face are tired. Rays of light in the window illuminate the dust motes floating slowly through the air.

“Shinnosuke.”

Takumi’s white hands slide on tatami mats in surprise; his head bounces against the floor with a mildly painful thump.

Leon stands above him, grinning. “What are you doing on the floor like a fool?”

Takumi lets out an angry huff. “I was _relaxing_ , until you came in and scared me.”

He accepts Leon’s hand up, and is pulled to his feet. Oddly, he notices that he’s just eye level with Leon’s straight nose; Leon’s lips are only a flutter of his eyelashes downwards.

“I wanted to compliment you on your performance,” Leon says. “You looked good.”

“O-oh,” Takumi says. He feels warm under his face paint. “T-thank you.”

Leon’s eyes probe his face. “Are you all right?”

He’s suddenly aware that they’re still holding hands, Leon’s hand a little cold but reassuring. “I’m fine,” he says quickly, withdrawing his hand sharply, but the motion jerks his shoulder and Takumi’s kimono slips off, leaving him only in his underwear.

Takumi prays to the Shinto, Buddhist, and Christian gods for a quick, painless death.

Leon’s face twists into an expression half-amused, half-concerned. “You should get cleaned up,” he says. “I’ll treat you to lunch, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Takumi manages, fearing his traitorous tongue will trip—on what, though?

Leon laughs gently—at Takumi’s face? At Takumi’s bare shoulders and chest? —and leaves.

Takumi looks at his hand. He feels like he just stepped off stage for the second time.

 

 

A forgotten dream wakes him hours before dawn.

He can’t go back to sleep, so he lies there, blanket covering only half of his body, watching the moon cast its light in shapes, illuminating the faint painted designs on the sliding door.

“This person you mean… you are…” he mumbles gently, the lines from _Kirare Yosa_ springing uninvited to his lips. “Why, I am Yosaburō! Did you forget…?”

The manner in which spoken lines sing doesn’t work very well when he’s trying to be quiet about it. Instead he occupies himself with Yukimura’s words from a week before in practice, to believe in the emotion Yosaburō feels for Otomi, to find someone he loves who will inspire him. He sifts through the women he knows, but no one he thinks of could very well have the grace. Oboro, a kind girl, but more like a sister than anything else. Kagerou, married. Orochi, too strange to think of someone other than an eccentric aunt. Kazahana, too headstrong and too close friends to his sister. Setsuna, too absent-minded. Certainly the actor who is playing Otomi is handsome, but he is too flippant.

He remembers, all too suddenly, how his kimono dropped that day when he pulled away from Leon’s hand. Yosaburō so enamored with Otomi he drops his coat.

“I’m wearing my coat,” Takumi recites in a daze. “I am.”

Leon’s pleasantly cold hand, Leon’s face lit only by the flame of a lighter, Leon laughing, his mouth a pleasing color and shape.

His head feels violently dizzy, even while he’s lying down. This isn’t right. He’s supposed to find a classy Japanese girl and court her gently and start a family and then raise a son to follow in his footsteps as a kabuki actor. This—whatever _this_ is—isn’t supposed to happen. This is—he presses his palms to his eyes in frustration— _shameful_. He’s an adult now. He can probably find a wife now; after all, Ryouma got married at this age, didn’t he?

 _Ryouma_. How can he think of that, when his brother so easily broke his own honor in half so cleanly, so quietly? Nothing can be done now. Nothing could be done then. There’s too much at stake. If Takumi hadn’t told someone at that time, he just might have burst, like a stone sliding out of the foundation, the whole castle crumbling down. He imagines Ryouma’s smooth unmarked face shattering into tiny, glistening pieces. To think that he must be bound for the rest of his life to these people, all of them.

Faces flash through his vision, quicker than thought, more transparent than illusions: Hinata, Oboro, Yukimura, Kagerou, Orochi, people he knows. Ryouma. Shinonome. The pearl bracelet, round and round between Leon’s long fingers.

Behind his ribs he feels cold and warm at the same time. He draws the futon blanket closer to his chin. He won’t be like that. He won’t act in shame. He won’t. He won’t.

 

 

“You really look unwell,” Leon says. “Should I have Jakob look at you?”

“It’s fine,” says Takumi. “I just didn’t sleep well last night.”

The house Leon lives in is decidedly Western, with floors of wood and stone and large, inviting windows dappling sunlight onto the walls. Takumi sits on a chair elevated from the ground across from Leon. A chessboard lies between them, though Takumi’s mind is too muddled with distractions to really pay attention to the game.

Leon moves a black piece. “That can’t be good for your performances.”

“It’s called acting.”

He laughs at that, his strange green-brown eyes crinkling at the ends. “Touché.”

Takumi stares at the board. He has no idea what Leon just did.

“Perhaps we should do something else,” Leon suggests after a long silence.

“Perhaps,” Takumi echoes automatically.

Leon pulls the sleeve of his shirt back to look at his watch. “Do you want to go watch the evening program at the theatre?”

“You want to watch kabuki?”

“We don’t have to,” says Leon. “I know that you’ve had enough of that to last a lifetime, probably.”

Takumi considers it for a moment. Ryouma and his son will be there. As precocious as Shinonome is, he doesn’t wish to be around anyone who might be at the theatre at that time. “Show me something from America,” he says instead.

“Were we actually in America, it would be a far easier task. Unfortunately I’ve only brought few possessions of sentimentality, most of which are books you can’t read. Unless…” Leon tilts his head, appraising him for a moment. “Have you ever worn Western clothes?”

“No,” says Takumi. “We’re only permitted to wear kimono in public.”

Leon stands up. “Let us see how you would look, then.”

Out of the people he knows from home, only Saizou wears a suit regularly, because otherwise it would be impractical to drive a car in a kimono. The holes are all foreign to him. He stares blankly at the garments Leon neatly laid out on his bed.

“It’s okay to undress,” Leon says from his seat by the window. Smoke rises from his pipe. “I’ve bathed with you, it’s all right.”

“It’s not that,” Takumi mutters, trying not to sound embarrassed.

A moment of silence passes, and then Leon realizes. Resting his pipe on the glass ashtray, he stands up. “My apologies. I’ll help you then.”

The thought of Leon’s hands touching him again makes Takumi tense. “A-are you sure?”

“Of course.” Leon makes a puzzled expression. “Why would I not be?”

“Never mind,” Takumi mumbles, reaching back to undo his obi.

Leon helps him put arms through sleeves and legs through pant legs, long fingers brushing against Takumi’s front as he buttons the white shirt. The whole act feels oddly intimate. When Oboro and Hinata help him dress for the stage, it usually feels like a chore, his body jerked in all sorts of directions so the obi is tied securely and the neckline exposes the nape of his neck just so. Here, Takumi stands as still as possible, praying that it will somehow calm his jumping heart as he is made anew by Leon’s clever hands. He studies Leon’s long eyelashes as Leon does his tie, a strip of smooth fabric dyed dark blue. They’re standing close enough that if Takumi leans forward and moves his head just so, he can—

“All done,” Leon says with a final tug—Takumi instinctively puts a hand up to the tie to feel its unfamiliar weight—and guides Takumi to the full-length mirror on the side. “Thoughts?”

He looks like a different person. The suit makes his limbs sleek in comparison to the kimono he normally wears. His face looks slightly uncomfortable and faintly flushed.

“I look weird,” he says.

“Fair enough,” says Leon. “I probably look weird wearing Japanese clothes.”

 _No, you look good_ , Takumi wants to say, but doesn’t.

 

 

When the sun begins to sink in the west, they walk to Takumi’s home. Takumi carries his folded kimono in a parcel wrapped by the butler, a small thrill in his step of breaking the rules and not wearing his kimono in public.

“Are you sure you want to stay at my apartment?” Takumi asks as they approach the building. “There isn’t a lot of space and my spare futon might smell strange.”

“It’s all right,” says Leon. “I think I should like to try it once, sleeping on the floor.”

“Do you not want to do it in the big house my family owns?” Takumi asks, looking down at his strangely shiny shoes. “It’s more comfortable.”

“I think neither you or I are comfortable there.”

Takumi opens a new bottle of sake and pours for both of them, and they drink. Leon lights a cigarette. Takumi opens the windows to let the warm spring breeze on his face.

The sky turns red, then indigo, then black, dotted with yellow lights from the city. Takumi feels warm and content. Leon opens a book and starts reading it aloud, mumbling in a language that Takumi doesn’t understand, but the flow and rhythm of words ebbs pleasantly in his ear.

“What is that you’re reading?” Takumi asks, lying on his futon. His suit jacket is thrown beside him.

“It’s poetry. And don’t lie on your clothes like that, you’ll wrinkle them.” Leon shuffles over on his knees, and starts undoing his tie. Takumi laughs, happy. Leon looks nice with the lamp behind him. Like the sun goddess, with the bright rays of the sun gathered around her. His hair catches the light and turns white around the edge of his head.

Takumi keeps laughing, even as Leon unbuttons his shirt and pants and forces them off. The cool air feels good. He was too warm before. He stops laughing when Leon throws a yukata at him.

“What’d you do that for?” Takumi protests.

“I’m not going to baby you even more than I have already,” Leon says, and unbuttons his own shirt. His skin looks pale and soft.

Their eyes meet, and Takumi looks away quickly.

“Sorry, I’ll—I’ll get the futon out,” he says, and stands up—too fast, the room sways, and Leon is there with his steady hands, Takumi’s face buried on the patch of skin between neck and shoulders.

“Take it easy,” Leon says. Takumi can’t focus. He inhales, trying to regain balance, but Leon smells like tobacco and sweat and some other musk, a little sharp but strangely intoxicating.

“In all the times I’ve drank with you, I didn’t know you were so poor at holding your liquor,” Leon says, trying to put Takumi back in his own futon. “I’ll get the futon out, just tell me where it is.”

“No that’d be rude of me. Let me get it out,” Takumi says. “You’re a guest, you shouldn’t…”

“You’re clearly not in a state to do it,” Leon says firmly. “Now, stay down.”

He lays out the second futon next to Takumi’s, puts on a yukata, and turns out the lights. Takumi lets his thoughts wander round and round with the slow turn of the ceiling fan.

“Do you ever miss home?” he says quietly.

“Do I miss home?” Leon echoes. He sighs into a brief silence. “Perhaps.”

“What’s America like?” Takumi prompts him, after he doesn’t elaborate.

Leon hums. “Busy,” he says finally. “In New York there is construction all the time. It is noisy until the very latest hours of the night. The buildings are everything from brick to stone to metal and glass.”

Such a description is out of Takumi’s depth. He tries to imagine a hundred men pounding a metal beam into the shape of a building, but it gives way to wood floors and tatami mats and sliding doors.

“Then do you like it here?” Takumi asks, his words feeling their way through the darkness.

“It’s nice here. And my family is here. And you.”

Takumi feels his heart leap. “What, am I only your only friend here?” he teases, desperately trying to keep his voice steady.

“I suppose so,” Leon says. “I have friends at home, too,” he adds, his voice a touch defensive.

“What are they like?”

“Strange. Ostentatious. Kind.” Leon pauses. “Why so many questions tonight?”

“I don’t know,” says Takumi. He tries to picture Leon with a band of—well, whatever constituted as strange but kind people. Leon eating and drinking with ghosts. Leon bathing with ghosts, debating philosophy with ghosts, playing chess with ghosts. None of that seems right. The skin between his ribs tingles where Leon had brushed against earlier buttoning and unbuttoning his shirt.

He looks out the window. The moon is almost full, brilliantly shining silver. It’s beautiful.

“Leon?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t call me ‘Shinnosuke’ anymore,” Takumi whispers.

Leon doesn’t say anything, the question hanging in the silence.

“My name is Takumi.” He breathes. “Yamato Takumi.”

“Takumi,” Leon tries. “Takumi. Takumi.”

Takumi closes his eyes. _Leon. Leon._ _Leon._

 

 

“Man, what did you eat for breakfast today? Your love-struck Yosaburō was scarily good,” Hinata says, sitting in Takumi’s room. He’s playing with a fan, opening the first few folds before snapping it shut again.

“The usual,” says Takumi. “Fish, rice, miso soup.”

“So routine. Typical you.” Hinata starts poking around, opening drawers, closets, lacquer boxes. “Hey, when’d you start smoking?”

“What?”

Hinata holds up an ashtray and a thin Japanese pipe. “When’d you start smoking? I thought you hated it.”

Takumi takes the pipe and turns it over and over in his hands. The polished red wood and the ends made of brass flash in the light. He presses the mouthpiece to his lips briefly, pulling away when it tingles. “This isn’t mine.”

Hinata stares at him for a moment before his eyes light up. “You’ve got a woman and she smokes!”

“ _What?”_

“That’s the only explanation,” Hinata says. He props his face on his elbows, leaning forward eagerly. “What’s she like? How long have you been meeting? Are you going to get married?”

“There isn’t a woman,” Takumi grumbles. “It’s my friend’s.”

“Uh-huh,” Hinata says, disbelieving. “Does anyone else know? Ooh!” He suddenly slams his hands down, making the cups jump. “Am I the first to know?”

“There’s no woman!” Takumi insists. “My friend just left it here, is all.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Hinata drops the ashtray back into the drawer. “Ooh, what’s this? A book?” He flips open the book. “It’s all in English.”

Takumi cranes his neck to look at the cover. Despite Leon teaching him a few words of English here and there, he can’t discern what the words mean.

“Well, no matter,” Hinata says, snapping the book shut and placing it back in the drawer. “You have too many books anyway. And I’m hungry. Let’s get something to eat.”

They both stand up to leave in search of a ramen stall, and if Takumi looks back at the drawer with the pipe and the book for a split second longer, Hinata doesn’t mention it.

 

 

Leon sits at the table, papers spread out in front of him, writing and re-writing, and folding the paper over and starting over again.

“What are you doing?” Takumi asks behind his book.

Leon puts the pen down and sighs. “Translating,” he says. “It’s a good exercise in my language skills.”

The rain pours outside, a spring storm that Mikoto always told him was for the benefit of the flowers. Takumi turns a page. “It sounds laborious, the way you’re sighing and groaning about it.”

“Perhaps, but I like the effort.” Leon stretches, and Takumi busies himself by pretending to be in engaged in the book. It’s not working. He’s read the same line about 30 times in the last fifteen minutes; rather his time was occupied sneaking looks at Leon’s trim waist and bony wrists. He digs his nails into his palm painfully.

“I wonder if the cinemas are showing anything interesting,” he wonders aloud.

“Oh god, no.” Leon closes his eyes and leans back on his hands. “They’re showing a movie with me in it, I’d rather not.”

“Well, now you’ve got my interest.” Takumi closes his book, grinning. “You’ve seen me perform, why should I not get to see you perform?”

“Because stage is different than cinema, as I’m sure you’re well aware,” Leon says. He winces. “And the thought of having to look at my face up close is a thoroughly uncomfortable idea. Do you want to play chess instead?”

“I don’t really want to stay in here anymore,” says Takumi.

“Then let’s take a bath or something.” Leon fans himself with a paper. “It’s so humid outside.”

They huddle under his umbrella and pad through the streets. Summer has come early this year. The trees’ leaves are rich green, and the rain is relentless. Takumi feels free, even if his underarms and neck are sticky. If anything, Leon is stickier and smellier, and Takumi laughs to himself at the thought.

The bathhouse is empty when they arrive. They shed their clothes and wash their bodies quickly and sink into the water. For a while, it is quiet save for the sound of water moving and dripping.

“I forgot to mention something,” Leon says suddenly. The water sloshes.

Takumi opens his eyes and looks at him. His green-brown eyes are unreadable.

“I’m leaving for America in two weeks’ time,” Leon says.

Takumi’s heart closes in a vice grip. A breath passes before his mind processes words for a response.

“I see,” he murmurs. “Is there a reason?”

“Must one have a reason to return to one’s homeland?” Leon shifts, and the water ebbs around him. “Actually I’ve been called back to do a film back home, and I can only hole up here and vacation for so long.”

And here Takumi had thought all along that Leon would stay in Japan until he grew old and died. What a foolish dream.

“What about the rest of your siblings?” Takumi asks.

“Marx can’t leave his job here, but Elise might follow me back soon after I go, and Camilla will follow wherever Elise and I go.” Leon laughs briefly to himself. “Marx will be all alone but I suppose that’s how it’s always been.”

Takumi doesn’t know what he means by that. He sinks lower and rests his head on the edge of the bath so he looks at the ceiling. The steam rises in thick waves, dancing freely in the air. He tries to swallow, but he can’t.

“I think I’m done for now,” says Leon. “I’ll meet you outside?”

“I’m going to stay a little longer,” says Takumi. “Go ahead and go home.”

Leon leaves. Takumi watches his pale shoulders and neck retreat. A memory of a voice tells him that he’ll be boiled if he stays in the hot water too long, but he ignores it.

Surely Leon will travel back by boat. The voyage will last, Takumi thinks, for weeks and weeks. How lucky, that Leon can sail across the oceans on feet unbound by chains of tradition. Leon is unobligated to marry and produce an heir to carry on the traditions of the guild and culture and history. Leon isn’t doomed to place careful step after careful step on a path already cleared.

He sinks lower into the water until the edge laps just under the protrusion of his mouth. He doesn’t move.

 

 

On the last day of the month’s programs, Shinonome is presented with a name of his own, and the family gathers at the house afterwards to celebrate. Takumi is greeted with a burst of “Uncle!” and a child runs through the hall to hug his midsection.

“I’m back,” Takumi says with a small laugh. “Congratulations on your name.”

“Shinonome, don’t stand on the _genkan_ ; you’ll get the floor dirty,” Ryouma says.

“Uncle, Uncle, I wanna show you something!” Shinonome tugs at his hand insistently. “They made a picture of me!”

“Maybe later,” Takumi tells his nephew. “We have to eat dinner first.”

The door slides open, and Kagerou pokes her head out. “Shinonome, come wash your hands,” she says.

“Okay,” he says, and trots through the door. Kagerou nods at Takumi and closes the door gently. She doesn’t look at Ryouma.

After a moment, Takumi says, “I trust the last day of performances went well?”

“Yes,” says Ryouma. “You were right. He did exceedingly well.”

The affection in his voice does not go without note. They will raise him well, Takumi thinks. As it should be.

The night flies smoothly by. Hinoka announces that she and Marx are planning to marry, and true to his nature Asama remarks “about time,” which is greeted with an angry outburst. Ryouma talks of contacts he’s made with Americans to visit America and perform there. Shinonome behaves despite his rambunctious seven-year-old nature. Sakura laughs at Kazahana’s antics with Tsubaki. Takumi eats quietly. He tries not to think about America and noisy streets and buildings of glass and metal. Life is fine, here.

 

 

Later that night, Sakura visits him with a _shamisen_.

“Not tonight,” he says. “I’m too tired.”

Words seem to catch in her throat, but she puts the instrument down all the same. He’s kept the door open, sitting facing the courtyard, his feet just hanging off the wooden planks. The warm breeze ghosts past his face and hair.

Sakura remains quiet. Her visit seems to ask him _are you all right?_ He doesn’t have an answer to that question yet, not that he knows of. Instead, he speaks honestly.

“I don’t know what to do,” he says quietly, carefully, laying the words out with trembling hands. “Someone… someone important to me will be gone soon.”

She moves to sit next to him. He half-expects her to say “it’s all right,” but she doesn’t—probably because she knows it isn’t.

Instead she says, “Life truly isn’t fair.”

It isn’t. Takumi brings his knees up, hugging his legs and puts his head down. Something in his chest hopes for a third act of _Kirare Yosa,_ some kind of triumphant reunion between Yosaburō and his beloved Otomi, but something in his gut tells him otherwise.

 

 

He runs into Marx outside of the house the siblings shared. Without any prompting or preamble Marx says “Leon left for America yesterday,” and Takumi thanks him and goes home.

It’s too hot now for him to want to do anything other than read with the ceiling fan spinning above him. He opens his drawers and shuffles about for a book to read.

A paper with unfamiliar handwriting flutters out from under a book. Curious, Takumi picks it up.

In a hand awkward in writing Japanese script, it reads:

_Let me confess that we two must be twain,_  
_Although our undivided loves are one._  
_So shall those blots that do with me remain_  
_Without thy help by me be borne alone._  
_In our two loves there is but one respect,_  
_Though in our lives a separable spite,_  
_Which, though it alter not love’s sole effect,_  
_Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love’s delight._  
_I may not evermore acknowledge thee,_  
_Lest my bewailèd guilt should do thee shame;_  
_Nor thou with public kindness honor me,_  
_Unless thou take that honor from thy name._  
_But do not so; I love thee in such sort,_  
_As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report._

The letters blacken when held up against the light of the late afternoon. Takumi stares at the words, feeling ice sink slowly into his limbs and lungs.

He runs a thumb gently against the ink of the words, trying to imagine them being written. He imagines the writer’s slim hands, bony wrists, fair hair and pale skin smelling like tobacco and sweat and something sharp and intoxicating.

Gently, he folds it in half three times and tucks it inside his sleeve. Outside, it begins to rain. He makes a pot of tea and sits in his room, remembering.

**Author's Note:**

> me @ myself: what’s storytelling
> 
> I don't normally write but this AU is one I care about too much hence......
> 
> Shout-out to my writer mutuals on twitter—even if I never actually talked to you guys about writing, your fic and your meta have helped and inspired me so much and I’m always glad and grateful to have your support.
> 
> For reference, my twitter is @lazys0n and you can yell at me there too.
> 
> Some cultural and general notes:
> 
> * The title comes from the expression _kabukimono_ (歌舞伎者), spelled with the same kanji used to write kabuki, used to refer to “those who were bizarrely dressed and swaggered on a street.”
> 
> * I shifted ages around to suit the story oops. Takumi is 23. Leon is 24. Ryouma is 32, Marx 30, Camilla 27, Hinoka 25, Sakura turns 21 over the course of the fic, and of course, Shinonome is 7. (tiny pee wee.)
> 
> * The name inheritance system isn’t 100% like described in the fic—normally actors don’t inherit very illustrious names until they are considered to have reached a peak in their career (a famous example is Ichikawa Danjūrō). Though you could also interpret that Ryouma was That Talented And Noteworthy as an actor that he received such a name at a young age. shrug.
> 
> * “Swinging lion wigs in great circles” is a reference to a dance-play in kabuki taken from Noh called _Kadonde Iou Kotobuki Renjishi_ which is about a father and son shishi, mythological lion-like beasts. Actors who share a father-son relationship in real life traditionally depict the shishi. The most notable feature of this play is at the end, when the two shishi put long wigs and swing them around in great circles. ([this particular performance features Kataoka Nizaemon and his grandson Kataoka Sennosuke.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP6Gmjf2K0g). Check it out if you like.)
> 
> * Takumi’s stage name, Shinnosuke, is spelled 新之助. His former stage name, Tsukinosuke, is spelled 月乃助.
> 
> * _Sakura-doki Zenino Yononaka_ (which translates to something like "The Season of Cherry Blossoms: A World Where Money Counts For Everything") is a thing, but it doesn’t seem to be a very commonly performed play. Shakespeare’s other works have been more popular with shingeki and shimpa, more modern forms of Japanese theatre.
> 
> * _Yowa Nasake Ukina no Yokogushi_ , also called _Kirare Yosa_ , features the star-crossed lovers Otomi, a geisha, and Yosaburō, a son of a merchant, who fall in love at first sight (Yosaburō is so enamored he drops his haori coat, lol). However, Otomi is the mistress of yakuza boss Genzaemon, and when he finds out Otomi and Yosaburō have met in secret, he orders his men to inflict many cuts on Yosaburō, but not to kill him. Otomi, believing Yosaburō is dead, attempts to drown herself in the sea, but is rescued by her brother. The third act depicts their reunion three years later.
> 
> * Yamato is the name of the Japanese royal family dynasty. It only seemed fitting as a family name for Hoshidan royals.
> 
> * The poem that makes an appearance at the end is Sonnet 36 by Shakespeare.


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